‘Brilliant’ General Giap dead at 102

Minority women greet General Vo Nguyen Giap, left, during a visit to the historic Dien Bien Phu military headquarters building in Muong Phang, Dien Bien Province, Vietnam, on April 19, 2004.

Photo: Reuters

Vietnam’s legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap, whose guerrilla tactics defeated the French and US armies, died on Friday at the age of 102, prompting an outpouring of tributes for the independence hero.

“I can confirm that General Giap died at 6:08pm today,” a government source said on condition of anonymity.

A military source confirmed the time of Giap’s death at Hanoi’s 108 military hospital, where he had been living for the last three years. He died surrounded by his family.

State-run online newspaper VNExpress said his body has been moved from the special care zone to the morgue at the hospital with a guard of honor to pay respect.

“Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap has passed away — brilliant military strategist who once told me that we were an ‘honorable enemy,’” tweeted US Republican Senator John McCain, a former US Navy pilot who was shot down and famously held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Giap, second only to late independence leader and founding president Ho Chi Minh as modern Vietnam’s most revered figure, was the founding father of the Vietnam People’s Army, whose guerrilla tactics inspired anti-colonial fighters worldwide.

“He’s a mythic, heroic figure for Vietnam,” said Carl Thayer, an Australia-based scholar of the country.

Vietnamese Internet users immediately began paying tribute to the general, who remained hugely popular in Vietnam despite being relegated to the political sidelines after the war.

“Rest In Peace the hero of the people. You will always be our greatest general,” one wrote, in a posting typical of the outpouring of grief which erupted online as news of his death emerged.

Giap, born on Aug. 25, 1911, into a well-off peasant family, was a self-taught soldier whose only military lesson came from an old encyclopedia entry describing the mechanism of hand grenades.

He went on to secure victory over the French in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu, the battle that ended Paris’ rule in Indochina and precipitated nearly two decades of US involvement in Vietnam.

“General Vo Nguyen Giap is one of the most talented military strategists and most famous generals, not just in Vietnam, but in world military history,” Vietnamese historian Phan Huy Le said.

His greatest triumph will always be the Dien Bien Phu victory, based on an astounding logistical feat by his Viet Minh fighters, who surprised the French by hauling their artillery into surrounding jungle hills from where they pounded enemy positions below.

“It was the spark that lit the powder for the empire. Less than six months after Dien Bien Phu, the Algerian war [for independence] began with the All Saints Day attacks. Dien Bien Phu was effectively where it all started,” French historian Hugues Tertrais said.

For two decades after Dien Bien Phu, Giap, a former history teacher who was fluent in French, continued to command his forces as they battled US troops and their surrogate regime in South Vietnam until final victory on April 30, 1975.

The fall of Saigon fuelled his near mythical status overseas as a master strategist and inspired liberation movements everywhere.

However, Giap’s success earned him some powerful enemies at home — including party chief Le Duan — and in 1980, Giap lost his post as defense minister.